All It Was Cracked Up to Be

Back from LibertyCon.  It was a great weekend.  Had a few firsts, made a few friends, and generally had fun.

Lets start with the egg-speriment in marketing.  I ended up putting tiny card stock coupons inside gold plastic Easter eggs.  The little paper had the cover pic; QR codes for Smashwords, Kindle, and my blog; web addresses for Kindle and Smashwords; and a coupon code.  The eggs seemed to be a hit.  77 of them were distributed, mostly from the freebie table where you usually find bookmarks, postcards, and black-on-florescent paper flyers.  I think the eggs were just more interesting looking and people grabbed more of them than they did bookmarks.

There a downside to the egg-speriment: so far, I’ve only sold one ebook out of an egg.  Yep, one.  I have a number of folks who have promised they will buy one, and they have a month before the coupon expires, so all is not lost.  We’ll see.

Sunday morning was my first opportunity to do a reading at a con.  I got the 10am time slot, a time hen many folks were bringing luggage to their cars.  I thought it would be the kiss of death.  It wasn’t.  I had an audience of at least a dozen (dare I hope it was a baker’s dozen?).  On top of that, all of them seemed to enjoy themselves.

I started by reading “Faerie Belches”, a middle-grades urban fantasy I originally sold back in 2008.  The crowd response was great.  I had forgotten what a sweet little tale it was, and it worked even better out loud.  The reading convinced me to send the story to PodCastle, an audio podcast market for fantasy.  I sent it today, so we’ll see…

The other story I read was “Call Me Z”, a previously unpublished zombie-culture story.  It was a story I always had faith in but never found a market for.  Again, the crowd seemed to like it.  So I was two for two.  (It helped that I bribed them with donuts — tiny, gas-station-bought donuts.)

Another first for me was being interviewed for a “YouTube show”, effectively a video podcast.  My new pal John Hartness hosts a show called Literate Liquors on which authors describe their works and recommend something to drink while reading them.  It was fun.  I’ll be sure to link to the episode when I find it.  (For what it’s worth, I got to watch guest of honor Brandon Sanderson record an episode even though he doesn’t drink.)

I made quite a few friends — too many to list in fear of missing one — and even better, I think I picked up a few new fans.  Now I need to go write more stuff for those fans to read.  A great weekend that has inspired me to get back to work.

Oh, and one more thing.  There was a general consensus at the con that $2.99 is to cheap for Baker’s Dozen.  So what do I do about it?  I’ll raise the price, but not yet.  No matter what happens, the $1 egg-coupon is good through August 22nd.  But if you’re planning to buy Baker’s Dozen, you might want to act soon!